Murder fugitive Magnotta captured while Web surfing porn and his own press

Matthew Fisher, Postmedia News06.03.2012

This image taken from CCTV obtained by Associated Press video shows Luka Rocco Magnotta entering the Internet cafe in the district of Neukoelln in Berlin, Germany, Monday, June 4, 2012, where Kadir Anlayisli, who works in the cafe recognized him. "I looked at him and thought I knew him from somewhere, because I read newspapers every day," Anlayisli said. Luka Rocco Magnotta was apprehended on Monday in an Internet cafe in Berlin after an employee there recognized him and alerted police, Berlin police spokeswoman Kerstin Ziesmer said. The 29-year-old Canadian porn actor is accused of videotaping a killing and mailing the victim's body parts to the country's top political parties.AP Photo
/ AP Video

Interpol released this image believed to be of Luka Rocco Magnotta at an airport security checkpoint. Magnotta is wanted internationally in connection to the murder and dismemberment of a Chinese university student in Montreal.Screengrab
/ PNG

Trauma counsellors are being made available to the federal Conservative political staffers who were present at the party's Ottawa headquarters on Tuesday...

BERLIN — The chameleon dubbed the Butcher of Montreal and Canadian Psycho by the media was arrested while looking at pornography and reading stories about the grisly murder he is accused of committing in Montreal on the night of May 24, and the international manhunt that crime triggered.

Luka Rocco Magnotta's short life on the lam ended less than two hours after being assigned cubicle 25 Monday morning. It is up nine steps at the back of the tidy 24-hour Spaetkauf ("late buy") Internet cafe, tobacco and alcohol shop at 156 Karl Marxstrasse in the suburb of Neukoeln or New Cologne, where most residents are either Turkish, Kurdish or Arab.

Cafe staffer Kadir Anlayisli said he thought he recognized Magnotta — who grew up as Eric Clinton Newman in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough — from a blitz of Internet and television images of the accused and immediately called police to report his whereabouts.

Less than two hours later, seven policemen took Magnotta down without a fight. A great self-publicist on the Internet before his crime, Magnotta probably got his wish when police released surveillance video of his arrest.

After first denying his identity, Magnotta was quoted by the Spiegel news magazine as telling police: "You got me."

Stefan Redlich, chief inspector of the Berlin police, said "there was no resistance. Not against seven police officers . . .

"A lot of legal questions will have to be answered before he's sent anywhere. We only had the arrest warrant so won't be investigating the case."

The German federal police force has notified Canadian authorities, Redlich said.

Redlich said he wasn't sure if the officers who arrested Magnotta knew he was a wanted man before punching his name into the computer.

"It has been in the news here, but probably not as much as in Canada and the United States," he said.

Reached by the Ottawa Citizen, Magnotta's mother declined to comment on the arrest.

The mutilated torso of Chines university student Jun Lin was discovered in a suitcase behind an apartment in the Montreal district of Cote des Neiges.

A Montrealer who frequents the Spatkauf Internet Cafe daily since moving nearby seven months ago said the standard tariff to surf the web is only 40 Euro cents (about 50 cents Canadian) for a 30 minute session.

Dix Franke of Montreal's Mile End described the area where Magnotta was trying to hide as similar to where the suspect lived in Cote des Neiges.

"It was very multicultural with people from everywhere," said Franke, 21. "It is a place that attracts people who cannot afford Internet in their home.

"I was astounded that he was found here. I had been reading everything about him that friends had sent to me from Canada on Facebook."

Magnotta is believed to have flown from Montreal directly to Paris the day after he is alleged to have murdered Lin.

Police from Montreal were understood to be on their way to Berlin Monday night to arrange Magnotta's extradition. He is to be arraigned at an in-camera appearance at a Berlin. A German official with knowledge of his situation said that Germany hoped to comply with a Canadian request to return him to Canada as soon as possible.

If Magnotta does not oppose extradition when he appears in court Tuesday, he could be on an airplane back to Montreal almost immediately. Even if he opposes extradition, there appears to be so much evidence against him in Quebec that German authorities hope that he will be on his way back there within one or two weeks.

Video cameras captured images of Magnotta as he walked into the Internet cafe beside a part of Berlin known as Little Istanbul. Although he fancied himself a master of disguise, Magnotta's hair was his own and he was simply dressed in jeans, sunglasses and a black jacket fitted with a hood at the time of his arrest.

Magnotta is facing five charges in Montreal, including first-degree murder, causing an indignity to a body, corrupting morals, using the mail system to deliver "obscene, indecent, immoral or scurrilous" material, and harassing Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Magnotta was believed to have arrived in Paris via Montreal on an Air Canada flight on May 26. Photos were posted internationally over the weekend of Magnotta passing through a Trudeau airport checkout in Montreal, wearing a dark wig and a Mickey Mouse T-shirt.

Surveillance at airports and train stations in France was intensified to try to ensure that Magnotta did not elude a police dragnet. But apparently he slipped through on Friday night, taking a bus to Berlin from Paris's main international terminal.

France's Le Figaro newspaper, which quoted police as saying officers were "terrified" of Magnotta, reported that he spent two nights last week at the Studio Batignolles, a cheap hotel in Paris's affluent 17th arrondissement. Curtains were drawn at Le Petit Batignolles, but the manager of the nearby bar had earlier been quoted as saying Magnotta had drunk a Coca-Cola just before 3 a.m. Friday, that police had taken away an empty bottle he may have used to check for the alleged killer's fingerprints and DNA, and were studying security videos.

Officials had also seized pornographic magazines and an Air Canada "vomit bag" from the room where he had stayed.

The French tabloid press and other French newspapers, like the highbrow Le Monde, reported "this profoundly disturbed man" and "habitual liar" had spent several nights in the 12th arrondissement, best known as the home of the La Bastille.

Both suburbs are easier to hide in than the centre of the self-styled City of Love, which always swarms with police.

There were other lurid reports of Magnotta's use of social networking sites and online video to fabricate a self-aggrandizing legend for himself as someone famous. He was said to be fascinated by physical and sexual violence and necrophilia and had problems with alcohol and drugs.

French police were tipped off to Magnotta's presence by a homosexual Internet acquaintance with whom he was said to have spent one night in the suburb of Clichy after arriving in Paris from Canada. Magnotta had been betrayed by his cellphone use, allowing police to trace his movements.

Magnotta, who lived in Paris in 2010 but does not speak French well, was reportedly sighted in the presence of a large man the French media have dubbed "le Colosse." It was said they tried to "pick up" two men.

It was also reported that Magnotta was a "kleptomaniac" and had already been seen shoplifting from two French stores. Police in Paris were particularly worried about locating him because they believed he was a master of disguise who might dress as a woman.

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Murder fugitive Magnotta captured while Web surfing porn and his own press